An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 51

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172

USA > Washington > Skagit County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 51
USA > Washington > Snohomish County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 51

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llowever, George Foster had a large camp there probably as early as 1861, and in the seventies Tamlin Elwell, Blackman Brothers, E. D. Smith, M. Il. Frost and possibly others logged in that locality.

It should be noted that when E. D. Smith arrived in September, 1863, he found one Dennis Brigham in possession of a claim extending three- quarters of a mile along the water front of Everett harbor, where some of the most valuable property in the city now is. In 1864 a telegraph line was built to Bellingham and Edward Kromer, who came to act as operator, took a claim next to Brigham's. He sold forty acres about 1888 to an Englishman named Edmund Smith, and the rest at a later date to Rucker & Swalwell. Kromer and Brigham were the first permanent settlers on the site of Everett. Some time before the fall of 1863, also, the site of Ferry & Baker's saw mill was taken by a squaw man, and later James Entwisstle and an old French- man took the site of East Everett. Nicholas Code was likewise one of the men who missed fortune by failing to stay with it.

Mr. Smith also recalls that in 1863 Charles See- bart was occupying a claim on the flats opposite Lowell. He will be remembered by all old pioneers as the man who, in 1871, was murdered with an ax and horribly mutilated in the middle of the night by his own son, a boy of about nineteen. The murderer was captured in Seattle and tried for the crime, but acquitted on the ground that he was not a responsible person.

Eldridge Morse, one of the counsel in the case. told the writer of the rather singular tactics pursued in this trial. He says the defense brought the boy's mother from California to testify that while the boy was yet in intra-uterine life, his father abused his mother shamefully. The theory of counsel was that the effect of this harsh treatment upon the mother's mind influenced the mind of the unborn child, causing an unconquerable aversion to and fear of the father ; that the boy was so thoroughly frightened by some threats made just previous to the murder that he considered his own life in dan- ger and knew of no avenue of escape but to kill his father. Undoubtedly the boy was of unsound mind.

An important incidental result of the establish- ment of Mr. Smith's first camp on the Snohomish was the removal of obstructions to navigation and the opening of the way for the coming of the steamboat. The first boom, in being driven down the river, encountered so many snags and other obstructions that it was almost lost. The logging firm therefore concluded to use Steamboat slough for driving purposes. Trees had fallen into this. inter-locking with each other where it was narrow and almost cutting off craft of any kind, but Smith sent men along each bank to saw off the trees and remove them, thus opening it to navigation. This

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was in the spring of 1864. Not long afterward boats began to visit the river, the Zephyr, Captain Wright and the Nellie being the first to make regu- lar trips upon it. Sailing vessels also came up the river at intervals during the early years, among them the schooner Minnehaha, of which Captain Clendenning was master.

Previous to September, 1863, the Atridge brothers, three in number, were engaged, on the slope just north of where Everett now is, in taking out spars for the French government. Their camp was a temporary one. Next year they spent some time on Nevels slough, in the Stillaguamish country, getting ready to log, but for some reason abandoned their project before even the preliminary work was completed. About two years later Thomas Run- nels took hold of their abandoned claim in good earnest, becoming the pioneer logger of the Stilla- guamish. Of the men employed by him in 1862.

several later became well known citizens of the county, among them being Gardner Goodrich, James Cuthbert, James de Valle, William Whit- field and James H. Perkins. Runnels sold to J. C. Record in 1868, or very early in 1869.

Logging operations on the Stillaguamish were not nearly so extensive during the early years as on the Snohomish and the sloughs. There were, however, a number of small camps there during the early seventies, among them those of Peter Harvey, near the Record claim, James Long on the river above Florence, and Olson & McFadden, two miles above Florence. James Hatt was the pioneer logger of Port Susan bay, starting proba- bly in 1863, to take out timber for the Utsalady mill. William Douglass succeeded him, about 1866, and Hatt filed on a claim and engaged in farming and saloon keeping.

CHAPTER II

CURRENT EVENTS, 1870-89

Naturally the earliest years of Snohomish county's history were years of slow development, the devotees of each industry being held back by the feebleness of other related or complementary industries, and all by absence of speedy transpor- tation. The extent of the logger's activity was limited by the lack of milling facilities, which could not come in a day, and the development of agri- culture would have been measured by the limits of the local market, had not the extreme difficulty of preparing the soil for the seed most effectually established its bounds. But the pioneer days were very important ones, if they were necessarily days of small things. The early settlers for the most part displayed a goodly quantity of public spirit, evincing a willingness to encourage to the extent of their ability any proposed industry. Naturally attempts to start saw mills were early made. The first to be built in the county after the Tulalip mill was erected by David Livingston and his two brothers about 1863. It was situated between Mukilteo and the site of the present Everett, about a mile and a half from the former point. Several vessels were loaded with its products but it could not compete with the large mills on the west side of the sound in the general market and there was no local demand, so it soon ceased operations. As early as 1866, the settlers of Snohomish City and

vicinity made a bold attempt to secure a saw mill in their midst, well knowing that such would be valuable not alone in itself, but for the encourage- ment it would lend the logging industry, which in turn would have the double effect of furnishing a market to the farmer and assisting him in the laborious task of clearing the timber from the soil. The evidence of this praiseworthy attempt is fur- nished by an act in the territorial session laws of 1866, "to Incorporate the Snohomish City Mill Company," the substance of which was as follows:

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Washington, That Clark Ferguson, W. B. Sinclair, M. L. King, John Harvey, E. C. Ferguson and Charles Short be and are hereby appointed, under the direction of a majority of whom subscription may be received to the capital stock of the Snohomish City Mill Company hereby incorporated, and they may cause books to be opened at such times and places as they shall direct, for the purpose of receiving subscriptions to the capital stock of said company, first giving thirty days' notice of the time and places of taking such subscriptions, by pub- lishing the same in some newspaper in this territory, or by posting notices thereof in not less than three public places in Snohomish county.

Sec. 2. The capital stock of said company shall be thirty thousand dollars, in shares of twenty-five dollars each, and as soon as one hundred shares of the capital stock shall be subscribed, and ten per cent. of the amount thereof actually paid in or secured to the said company, the subscribers of said stock, with such other persons as

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shall thereafter associate with them for that purpose, their successors and assigns, shall be and they are hereby created and declared a body corporate and politic by the name and style of the Snohomish City Mill Company, with perpetual succession, and by that means shall be capable in law of purchasing, holding, selling, bargaining and conveying estate real, personal and mixed; have a common seal which they may alter or renew at pleasure, and generally may do all and singular, the matters and things which an incor- porated company may by law do. * * *

Sec. 8. The said company shall have power to locate and construct a mill at or near the mouth of a small creek on the north bank of the Snohomish river, and on the land claim now held by E. C. Ferguson, in Snoho- mish county, to be determined by vote of the stockholders holding a majority of the stock of said company, who shall be represented in person or by proxy at a special meet- ing called for the purpose of fixing the location of said mill. * * *

Sec. 12. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.

Passed the House of Representatives January 9, 1866. EDWARD ELDRIDGE, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Passed the Council January 10, 1866.

HARVEY K. HINES, President of the Council. Approved January 18, 1866.

WILLIAM PICKERING, Governor of the Territory of Washington.

For the first decade or more of settlement in Snohomish county, the assessed valuation of prop- erty was very slight. In 1862 it amounted to but little more than eleven thousand dollars divided among forty-four persons. In 1870 it was one hundred and thirty-eight thousand five hundred and seventy dollars, of which all but nineteen thou- sand six hundred and seventy dollars was on per- sonal property. The reason for the slight valuation of realty was that practically all the land except a few quarter sections at Edmonds was still really the property of the United States government, and not subject to taxation, what was in control of settlers being held first by squatter's right and later under the homestead and preemption laws. About three townships in the vicinity of Mukilteo were early surveyed. Upon them grew some of the finest timber in the county, hence much of this land was a great temptation to the Puget Mill Company, which in the latter sixties and early seventies ac- quired title to it in the usual way. The first tract of land on the Snohomish river above its mouth for which a deed was procured was the preemption claim of E. C. Ferguson, who offered final proof in February, 1871. Between that date and 1875, quite a number of claims were patented, and about 1873 patents began to be secured by settlers on the Still- aguamish.

According to the ninth censuis, that of 1870, the population of Snohomish county was then 599 persons, of whom 529 were white, the remainder being: Indians, 65; Chinese, 3; free colored. 2. The local enumerator, Hon. Edward Eldridge, is

also quoted as authority for the statement that the county at this time was supporting one pauper at an expense of one hundred and thirty-eight dollars per annum, and that the industries of the county, aside from agriculture, were the Eagle Brewery at Mukilteo, one camp getting out ship knees, four- teen logging camps and five shingle factories. By the last mentioned are meant places where one or more men were engaged in splitting cedar shingles by hand. There were no shingle mills at this date.

During 1870, eleven persons died in Snohomish county, none of whom were women, nor did any woman succumb to the dread reaper until the next year, when Mrs. A. Peden was drowned near the head of Ebey slough, through an accident to a canoe in charge of Charles Low, who afterward commanded the well known steamer Nellie. The first woman to die of disease was Mrs. M. W. Packard, whose demise occurred December 12, 1875. The next was Mrs. Eldridge Morse, March 10, 1876. The simple reason for the apparently small mortality among women was the fact that there were very few women in the county during the first decade and a half of its existence. The seeds of the higher civilization, with its family ties, its schools and churches and other social organizations had been sown, to be sure, both on the Snohomish and the Stillaguamish, but a very large proportion of the population consisted of single men, who had no special abiding places, but went wheresoever the fortunes of the lumber camps might lead them.

When the county was first organized all its litigation above the jurisdiction of the justices and judge of probate was carried on in Port Town- send, but by an act approved January 25. 1868, the counties of King. Kitsap and Snohomish were made a stib-district of the third judicial district, and given a court at Seattle. By the legislature of 1825-6, litigation was still further cheapened and rendered convenient by the establishment of a dis- trict court of the county of Snohomish. of which court the first session was held in March, 1876, J. R. Lewis, chief justice of the territory, pre- siding.

The year 1874 is remembered by E. D. Smith as one of unusual severity. He states that the ther- mometer indicator began to descend about Decen- ber 15th, and that by Christmas one could skate the entire length of the lower Snohomish river. He remembers this especially because a dance was given in his hotel about that time, which was at- tended by a number of Snohomish people who came down on the ice. When the break-up came, about six weeks after the beginning of the cold snap, ice a foot thick floated down the river, form- ing regular jams in places. This was the severest winter since the notable one of 1860-61. when the entire Northwest was imprisoned by the frost king for months.

While there was a general financial depression

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throughout the country at large following the panic of 1873, its unwelcome influence was not felt in Snohomish county. At this time everything was in too primitive a state for a panic to have much effect. Nobody had great wealth; nobody was in debt ; there were no deferred payments falling due to be paid in appreciated currency and there was no "confidence" to be lost, except confidence in the future of the country. Furthermore, there was no intimate dependence upon the outside world ; hence little or no movement of local conditions in sympa- thy with general conditions. The years 1870 to 1876 inclusive were years of no little activity in the development of the lumber industry of Sno- homish county and the sound generally, giving encouragement to primitive agriculture, which developed concomitantly.

As heretofore stated there were fourteen log- ging camps in the county in 1870. By 1876, the number of camps had nearly doubled, and it is safe to assume, that owing to improvements in method and increase in the average number of men and oxen employed, the output had increased in a much greater ratio.

According to statistics of the logging industry of Snohomish county compiled by Sheriff Benjamin Stretch and published in the Northern Star of June 24, 1876, the following camps were then in opera- tion on the Snohomish river and its tributaries, namely, those of William Stockton, eight oxen, eight men; Charles Taylor, ten oxen, eight men ; Bennett & Flattan, sixteen oxen, twenty men ; Fred Foss, eight oxen, eight men; Blackman Brothers, eight oxen, four mules, ten men; J. B. Roberts, twenty-two oxen, nineteen men: Stephen Hogan, eight oxen, eight men ; J. Ross & Company, twenty oxen, twenty men ; H. Mills, eighteen oxen, seven- teen men; W. S. Jamieson, fourteen oxen, eight men ; Mowatt & Hinman, eight oxen, seven men; E. D. Smith, fourteen oxen, fourteen men ; Warren Smith, ten oxen, twelve men; William Hawkins, eight oxen, six men ; Ulmer Stinson, ten oxen, ten men ; Tamlin Elwell, eight oxen, ten men. Besides these there were on the Snoqualmie river. in King county, the following loggers, who floated all their logs down the Snohomish, and made Snohomish City their business center, namely, Wilbur & Clark, twelve oxen, twelve men ; Elwell & Son, twelve oxen, fourteen men ; James Duvall. ten oxen, eight men ; Frank Duvall, ten oxen, eight men.

Camps in the county off the Snohomish or its tributaries were : M. H. Frost, ten oxen, eight men, at Mukilteo; George Bracket, ten oxen, ten men, at Ten Mile Point, and the following on Port Susan bay or in the Stillaguamish region, namely, Thomas Runnels, twelve oxen, eight men ; Finlason & Mun- son, ten oxen. eight men : Follansbee & Company, twelve oxen, eight men ; James Long & Company, ten oxen, eight men; J. H. Record, twelve oxen, twelve men ; W. B. Moore, twelve oxen, eight men.

Counting the four camps on the Snoqualmie river above the King county line we have a total of twenty-eight camps, three hundred and twenty-two oxen and three hundred and seven men. It was estimated that they would cut in 1876 more than fifty million feet of logs. The market was good that year and the loss in driving the logs down the river was much less than usual.

Of no little importance to the settlements on the Snohomish and its tributaries was the building of a saw mill in 1876 on the Pillchuck about a mile from Snohomish City. In July P. M. Bennett arrived with his family from Missouri, and very soon afterward a partnership was formed between him and his old friend, L. H. Witter, for the purpose of engaging in a general milling business. The firm of Bennett & Witter lost no time in getting to work, and by December the mill was in operation. The first board sawed by it was presented to the Snohomish Atheneum for preservation as a sou- venir. It was the intention of Messrs. Bennett & Witter to put in a feed and grist mill also, and so build up the grain-raising industry in the Snohom- ish valley, but this part of their plan was never carried into effect, as the development of agriculture at the time did not warrant it, nor have subsequent developments established the practicability of wheat production in this part of the county.

On the Stillaguamish flats, however, a splendid success was rewarding pioneer experimenters in the growing of cereals, and there was much activity there during the middle seventies in consequence. From the Star of October 7, 1876, we quote the fol- lowing : "Farmers on the Stillaguamish flats are lay- ing out a great deal of money in ditching and fen- cing, adding greatly to the beauty and value of their ranches. The county road across the flats is being constructed in a thorough manner. A ditch is dug each side of the road and the dirt is thrown into the center and leveled, forming a very solid, even and dry road bed. Fences are built most all the way of lumber, which adds greatly to the appear- ance of the country."

The paper just quoted has also preserved for us some statistics furnished by one of the prominent residents of the Stillaguamish country, which will convey a very good idea of the extent to which the agricultural development had progressed by the fall of 1876. He stated that Henry Oliver had about a hundred acres in cultivation, thirty of which were in grass, the rest in grain ; that Peter Wilkin- son had one hundred and eighteen acres, seventy- five of which were in barley and oats; Thomas Ovenell, one hundred and twenty acres, fifteen in grass, the rest in grain ; J. McDonald, eighty acres. twenty in grass, the rest in grain; William Hunt. forty acres, nearly all grain; W. B. Moore. one hundred acres, half grass, half grain; F. Hancock, sixty-five acres, twenty grass, the rest grain ; Mrs. J. Bradley. J. V. Cook and Peter Gunderson about

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forty acres each, nearly all in grain : O. B. Iverson, thirty-five acres of grain on George F. Kyle's place. The farmers named were dwellers on the marsh and all this acreage had required diking before it could be cultivated. The same gentleman is author- ity for the statement that Oliver Thompson had about one hundred and forty head of hogs to sell and Peter Wilkinson sixty or seventy head: also that a thousand pounds of butter would be produced above that required for home consumption. lle also stated that a large amount of additional land was being diked by Messrs. Ilaller. Hancock. Hunt, Mc Donakl. Moore, Ovenell, Wilkinson and Iverson. and that the amount of arable land would be greater next year by some three hundred acres. The pro- duct of grain and hay on the marsh he estimated at thirty-five thousand bushels of the former and one hundred and twenty-five tons of the latter. He thought that the two hundred acres of land culti- vated on Hall's slough and up-river would produce a hundred tons of hay in excess of that required for home consumption. besides a large quantity of vegetables and a little grain. The potato crop was reported as very poor both on the river and on the marsh at its mouth.

At this time the Stillaguamish settlement con- sisted of some twenty-five families, about a half dozen bachelors keeping house, and four logging camps.

The year under review was one of rapid im- provement in the transportation facilities enjoyed by Snohomish county points. When the Snohomish river settlers first came they had to depend almost entirely upon their canoes and small boats for the transportation of themselves and their goods to and from places on the sound. Later sound boats of lighter draught began visiting them occasionally and eventually the time came when they could depend upon receiving a call from a steamboat at least once a week on the average. As the commercial importance of the up-river settlements increased the interest of freight and passenger hunting craft increased also, until by 1876 Snohomish City was visited at frequent intervals by at least three dif- ferent boats, the Fanny Lake, Captain J. S. Hill, the Zephyr and the Yakima, giving connection with Seattle three or four times, the Stillagnamish and Skagit rivers one to three times and Port Gamble and several other points at least once weekly.

No review of the events of the year 1876 in Snohomish county would be complete without men- tion of the first newspaper of the county, the North- ern Star, which came into existence carly in Jan- uary. Its editor, Eldridge Morse, and his assistant, Dr. A. C. Folsom, were both men of unusual liter- ary and scientific attainments, and the paper they issued was exceedingly ambitious in many ways, too much so, perhaps, for the patronage it could hope to secure in a new and struggling community. It attempted to keep its readers informed on the

progress of scientific knowledge. threw open its columns for a free discussion of all the problems of past and present, including religion, and labored in season and out for the spread of information regarding the resources and possibilities, not alone of Snohomish county, but of the whole sound coun- try. U'ndoubtedly it did much during the two and a half years of its existence for the increase of population and encouragement of local enterprise.

The Star was not a month old when it became its sad duty to chronicle the most melancholy event in the history of the county up to that time. Jan- uary 25th about six o'clock in the evening Horace Low. Clayton Packard. Arthur Batt and Charles Elwell, the first two of whom were employed in the Star office, started for a lake a mile from town for the purpose of indulging in an hour's skating. By the time they reached the lake the short winter day was drawing to its close, and the on-coming darkness made it impossible for them to discover a sheet of thin ice which skaters at an earlier hour had carefully avoided. The young men had no more than begun to enjoy the sport, when Low and Batt broke through. In an instant their companions came to the rescue, but though they made brave efforts, they were unable in the darkness to find a pole to extend to the struggling men, or to reach them on the ice. At one time Packard got within ten feet of Batt, by crawling on his abdomen, but the ice gave away under him, and he could go no further. When the survivors saw that all was over they lost no time in returning to town and giving the aların. The people turned out en masse. with grappling hooks and lanterns, improvised a rude raft. and by midnight procured the bodies.

In the fall of 1812. a severe epidemic of diph- theria visited Snohomish county. The first to take down with the dread disease was George D. Smith then on the river a mile above Lowell, now a resi- dent of Snohomish. Samuel Howe, on Ebey slough. lost five children ; James Vance. two miles above Lowell, lost his entire family of three: and Mrs. Clark, near Snohomish, lost three little girls. It is said that all the children in the Lowell school dis- trict except two died of the disease : and there were fatalities also at other points along the river and in Snohomish City. In all seventeen succumbed to its ravages. It was what is known as black diph- theria, a particularly virulent type.

While the Snohomish county pioneers enjoyed a period of great prosperity and relative advance- ment notwithstanding the general depression ensu- ing upon the panic of 1873, the wheels of progress were most effectually blocked in 18:1. In the four intervening years, the sound country had come into close touch, through the ocean, with the outside world. Its large milling companies had succeeded in creating a demand for their lumber in Mexico and some of the South American states, in Austra- lia and the Orient, and even in the earliest days.

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An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 51

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.) Publication date: 1906 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1172

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172